By By ERIKA PICKLES / Niles Daily Star
NILES - When you start out the district tournament playing a top ranked team, your main goal is to give it your all. The Niles volleyball team did that during Saturday's district tournament held at Niles High School, but still fell short to St. Joseph in the opening game of tournament play.
The Vikings were able to to win one match against the Bears, but fell short in the other three to allow St. Joseph to advance.
St. Joe took a 25-11 win in the first match, but the Vikings claimed the second match 25-20. The Bears went ahead 10-3 in the beginning, but Niles came back to pull off the win.
The comeback frustrated St. Joe enough to make them cause some fundamental offensive and defensive errors.
The Vikings were able to tie the game at 18 and took the lead when Emily Knuth and Melissa Blake both hit the ball into the net.
A serving erRor by Sam Brawley gave the Bears a point and possesion of the ball, but a kill by Claire Molnar added another point to Niles' score.
A defenseive error on Niles' side brought the Bears within one point 21-20, but another kill by Molnar put the Vikings back up by two. Three errors in a row on the Bears' end gave Niles the three points it needed to win the second match 25-50.
Niles made a lot of errors in the third match allowing St. Joe to put some easy points on the board.
The Bears were able to jump ahead of Niles early and took a quick 25-10 win in the third game.
The fourth match was a repeat of the third with St. Joe pulling off a quick lead and scored 16 points in a row. The Vikings were down 19-3 before they were able to get a point on an error from the Bears.
Some out of bounds mistakes from St. Joe added some much needed points to Niles' score, but not enough to let themm claim the win. St. Joe took the 25-14 fourth match win and the rights to move on in the tournament.
"Overall I was very please with the girls in the second game. We're talking about a team that has been ranked high in the state all season so I was overall pleased with the way they played they were just nervous and scared, but I was pleased," Foster added.
Seniors Ashley Pingel, Amber Peters, Melissa Olsen and Kaylee Bonner all contributed well during their last volleyball game in the Niles gym.
The Vikings end their season with a 16-19-6 record.
Amber Peters had 19 aassists, eight digs, three points and one kill for Niles. Claire Molnar had nine digs, seven points and five kills.
Melissa Olsen had eight kills, one dig and one block. Dagmar Hoffman had two kills, two digs and one block. Ashley Pingel had 12 digs, four points.
Kaylee Bonner had 11 digs, four points. Karly Kennedy had seven digs, four kills. Sam Brawley had seven points, six digs. Mehgan Flynn and Brittney Passig both had two digs, one kill. Kaylynn Stephenson had three digs, two points and Leigh Tyler had two digs for the Vikings.
Lakeshore was able to claim the district championship title for the first time in three years when they faced Coloma, the Lakeland Conference champions, in the final game. The Lancers beat St. Joe in the semifinals 26-24, 20-25, 19-25, 25-23, 15-8 and beat the Comets in three matches in the finals 25-22, 25-21 and 25-16.